Rudd v Gillard: What’s at stake and for whom?
The Australian Labor Party needs to see the challenge for its leadership as something bigger than a soap opera, writes PETER HARTCHER.
With his challenge to Julia Gillard’s leadership, Kevin Rudd will now present the Australian Labor Party with a shocking prospect – would it like to be electable? Or would it rather continue indulging its personal distaste for Rudd all the way to electoral defeat?
For all the frenetic denunciations of Rudd over the past few days, for all the bristling hostility, the essential truth is that Rudd is not the Gillard government’s problem.
Its problem is that, for a year now, the opinion polls have been steadily conveying a simple and unmistakable message – that the Australian people do not approve of Gillard and will not elect her.
Dozens of Labor MPS face an electoral wipe-out under Gillard and are turning to the only Labor member who could plausibly improve the party’s standing with the people. The bile that has been spilling from the ranks of the Gillard government in the past few days has been all about Kevin.
It was amiscalculation. Rudd turned the caucus spite to his advantage. He used it as the opportunity to openly break with Gillard and quit her cabinet.
This frees him to campaign for the leadership without restraint. Gillard will now seek to recover the initiative. She will initiate a ballot for the leadership on Monday. But Rudd can choose to run, or not. What if she declares a spill and Rudd just sits there?
That’s what Paul Keating did to Bob Hawke in 1991. Keating demanded a vote on his terms and timing. Rudd has enormous tactical flexibility.
Rudd is taking a risk, nonetheless. The electorate could be forgiven for wondering what the hell this entire indulgent episode is about. Is Rudd having an ego tantrum?
If he is to preserve the good opinion of the people, he will have to inject some greater meaning and purpose into his actions, and urgently. Until then, this is amere popularity contest.
In the words of Rudd’s own Ash Wednesday announcement, it is a ‘‘soap opera’’. And it will remain so until Rudd or Gillard can make it a meaningful contest over the future of Labor and the destiny of the country.
Rudd has less than three days to run a campaign, to lobby caucus members. He does not yet have amajority. On the best boast of his camp, he has 39 votes out of a caucus of 103.
He might strike and fail. That’s what happened to Paul Keating, who lost his first challenge with 44 votes to Hawke’s 66. If so, Rudd will repair to the backbench and, like Keating, continue to campaign as he prepares for a second strike.
And once a challenge is out in the open, the advantage passes from the incumbent to the challenger. Until now, Rudd, as a member of the Gillard cabinet, has not been able to openly court his colleagues or to speak to the electorate. Now he can. And the primeminister’s automatic sway over her 30 ministers and parliamentary secretaries will evaporate in a secret ballot. But it is still, for the electorate, more like a Seinfeld episode, a show about nothing, than a purposeful contest. The people demand more.
Because the question for MPS will be one that millions of workers face daily: would I rather keep my job under a boss I don’t like, or face unemployment?
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has dared her political rival, former foreign minister Kevin Rudd, to challenge her in a leadership vote next week, hoping to end infighting that threatens to sink the minority government and its reform agenda.
Gillard called yesterday for the vote to be held by ruling-party politicians on Monday, gambling that a victory for her would silence Rudd who she accused of trying to destabilise her unpopular government and regain the top job.
The Gillard-rudd rivalry has been brewing since she replaced him as prime minister in a late-night coup in 2010. It burst into the open on Wednesday when Rudd quit as foreign minister, saying he could no longer work with Gillard and that she could not win the next election, due next year.
‘‘Following Kevin Rudd’s resignation yesterday, I have formed this view that we need a leadership ballot in order to settle this question once and for all,’’ Gillard told reporters, keeping composed and trying to contrast Rudd as a ‘‘chaotic’’ leader.
‘‘For far too long we have seen squabbling within the Labor Party. Australians are rightly sick of this, and they want it brought to an end,’’ she said.
Gillard said she expected Rudd to stand for the leadership, although he had yet to declare whether he would stand.
A Monday vote limits Rudd’s ability to build sufficient support to replace Gillard.
Rudd is travelling back to Australia from Washington, where he was on an official visit when he suddenly quit as foreign minister.
The latest crisis has been prompted by poor opinion polls for Gillard’s minority government and concerns the party would be decimated at the next election.
Rudd, speaking in a final televised news conference from Washington before boarding a flight home, said he was pleased with the support he had received from his colleagues, and he was being encouraged to run against Gillard.
‘‘I’m very pleased and encouraged by the amount of positive support and encouragement of me to contest the leadership of the Labor Party,’’ Rudd said.
Opinion polls show Rudd remains more popular with voters although he is not well liked within the government.
Gillard is backed by most of the government’s 103 MPS, including most senior cabinet members, and Rudd is considered unlikely to have the numbers to mount a successful challenge.
Bookmakers put the odds of a Gillard victory at $1.25 versus $3.75 for Rudd.
There are few policy differences between Gillard and Rudd, with the contest more about who can appeal more to voters.
However, a surprise victory by Rudd could force an early election and change of government, putting at risk the future of key reforms such as a carbon tax and 30 per cent tax on coal and iron ore mine profits, both due to start on July 1.
If he wins back the prime ministership, Rudd would need to quickly renegotiate agreements with the Greens and at least two independents to secure a one-seat majority in Australia’s hung parliament, or else he could be forced to hold fresh polls.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has vowed to scrap the mining tax and carbon tax if he wins power.
Gillard said that if she loses Monday’s vote, she would return to the backbench and relinquish all leadership ambitions. She urged Rudd to make the same commitment.
Rudd and his backers now want the vote delayed until March 2 to give him time to speak to colleagues and lay out his plan.
He said the decision for MPS should be based on who they believed could best win the next election.